http://blaynesucks.com and other thoughts on group stupidity.. Tue, 06 May 2008 13:00:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As I mentioned in my last post, Randy Pausch's book The Last Lecture has become a runaway success. (And Randy has was named to Time Magazine's 100 most influential people, which is an honor he absolutely deserves.) The day after Finals week ended I read the book cover ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/05/06/book-the-last-lecture For those of you who don't know, Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also dying of cancer. He is 46 years old. As many other people, I have been following Randy Pausch's battle with pancreatic cancer for a while now. ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/04/21/last-lecture-redux As a former member of the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers Rube Goldberg team, I was extremely pleased to see that they recently won the national competition! If you have never heard of the Rube Goldberg competition before, then you'll definitely want to check out this summary page that ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/04/10/purdue-wins-rube-goldberg-competition I just ran across a post on Concurring Opinions that rocked me back in my seat. The full text of two of Dan Solove's most popular books are now available online for free. The Digital Person and The Future of Reputation are both fantastic books. I have ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/03/27/soloves-books-available-online Last weekend I was able to see a documentary called Helvetica. Although most people I've recommended it to this past week have been less than enthusiastic in their feelings towards watching a documentary of a typeface, I strongly urge anyone reading this to give it a fair shot. ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/03/21/helvetica I previously posted my thoughts on Lawrence Lessig's possible run for an open seat in the House of Representatives. Since that time, he has decided not to run. For those who support him and his ideas, this is actually probably the better decision in the short run. ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/03/03/thoughts-on-lessigs-choice-not-to-run Allison passed me a link to a video about the comparisons between Barack Obama's campaign for President of the United States and the fictional Santos Campaign on the TV show The West Wing via email today. I have mentioned that I'm a fan of The West Wing before. ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/02/28/slate-v-on-life-imitating-the-west-wing Although Ed Felten has recently gotten tons of press about his research group's recent analysis of breaking hard drive encryption, I wanted to talk about some research that he's done previously on electronic voting for several reasons. First, I mentioned voting in my last post. Second, I have ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/02/23/ed-felten-on-electronic-voting Lawrence Lessig, perhaps best known for his creation of Creative Commons licensing, is considering a run for Congress. His possible campaign website, and the somewhat related change congress website, talk about the kind of change that Congress needs. While the talk is good, I am not sure it's ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/02/22/lessig-for-congress Fox News is reporting that some lost documents and artifacts relating to the assassination of JFK were found in a Dallas courthouse. As someone who has been fascinated with the JFK assassination for years, this is obviously interesting news for a variety of reasons. My first reaction was ... http://blaynesucks.com/2008/02/19/jfk-assassination-documents-uncovered